Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954, where she still lives.

She went to school at Scoil Bhríde, then in Earlsfort Terrace; St Mary’s, Haddington Road, and Scoil Chaitríona, Eccles Street. In 1971 she won the English Prize in the University College Dublin entrance scholarship, and began to attend UCD, where she was awarded a BA in Pure English in 1974. She then studied for an M Phil in Medieval Studies, and finally worked on a Ph D. Her doctoral dissertation, "With His Whole Heart", was an investigation of the history of a folktale found in international oral tradition and literature and best known as Chaucer’s "The Friar’s Tale". She was awarded her Ph D doctorate in 1982, from the National University of Ireland.

As an M Phil student, she worked as a tutor of Old English in UCD, and also as a cataloguer in the Department of Irish Folklore there. In 1976 she began to work as a civil servant in the Civil Service Commission, and within a year moved to the National Library, where she began work as an Assistant Keeper. In 1978 she left the library to take up a research scholarship awarded by the Danish government. She spent the following year in Copenhagen, where she learnt to speak Danish fluently, carried out research on her doctoral dissertation, and attended courses at the Folklore Institute at the University of Copenhagen. When she returned to Ireland in 1979 she got a job as a supervisor on the Urban Folklore Project, which was run by the Department of Irish Folklore. For a year and a half she interviewed people all over Dublin and collected a great deal of memoirs, lore and stories. A new vacancy arose in the National Library at that stage. She re-applied, got the job and has worked there ever since, on a half time basis since 1990.